Tuesday, April 17, 2012

If you have wood floors, you're probably intimately familiar with felt pads. They're easy to apply, serve an important function to keep your floors scratch-free, and unfortunately they never stay on chair legs, at least at my house. It's because of the constant moving around and sliding, I'm sure... but it doesn't make it any less bothersome.

Next time, try this little tip to adhere pads to pieces of furniture that get moved around a bunch:

First, get a bottle of 2-part epoxy. You can find this at regular stores in the glue section, and it has two separate components that when mixed together are super duper ultra-mega strong. Ultra-mega, guys. The stuff I used for this post is Loctite brand, and I found it at my friendly neighborhood grocery store.

I used a disposable plate and a toothpick to mix the two parts together -- once they're mixed you need to move fairly quickly, so do a few chairs at a time and mix the epoxy in small batches.

Next, flip your furniture over and clean the place where the felt pad will go with rubbing alcohol. Let it dry for a moment, then apply some epoxy with the toothpick. Some brands (like Loctite) suggest applying the epoxy to both surfaces, so I also added a bit to the back of the pads.

Then stick the pad on, and make sure the chair stays upside down and relatively level so the pads don't slide off while the epoxy sets up.

It should set up in a few minutes and should be cured within 24 hours. Easy peasy, and this quick tip will help the felt pads stay on the furniture, where they belong.

10 comments:

I have a sofa that has done quite a number on my floor because the felt pads keep coming off. Why can't my kids just sit on a sofa? They feel the need to throw themselves onto it and push it back each time.

Do they come off easily enough when you want them to, though? I replace my felt pads every 4-6 months, because they get all gunky and don't allow the chairs to slide any longer. It'd be a pain to do this and then find I can't replace the felt, ever!

I always wanted to glue the suckers. You can probably try using something like Shoe Goo if you want to replace the pads. I'm thinking a silicon based sealant will work as well. Good to see I'm not the only person in the world running into this problem :)

Has anyone ever tried using hot glue? I did over a month ago and they are still holding. Mind you the dining room chairs haven't had too much use but they are still holding better than the felt pads alone. If it does fail though I'm sure to try the epoxy trick. Albeit messy but at least I know they won't come off!

This did not wok for me. The epoxy did not adhere permanently to either the felt pad or the porous wood chair leg. I sanded the epoxy off of the legs down to bare wood. I then removed the goo from the felt pads with a sharp knife point. I then applied wood glue to both surface and placed the pads on the legs. Let set for 12 hours. Permanent fix.